Preparation and making ready

When you plan a vacation to a place you’ve long wanted to visit, you typically don’t just get in your car and go.

Just so, we want to prepare our hearts during Advent. That might mean some decluttering—letting go of unnecessary things taking up room inside: grudges and resentments, anger, old messages that keep us from opening our hearts to God’s gift of love. And not just our hearts. If we truly want to make Advent meaningful, we may have to do some decluttering of our schedules, too.

Typically, people’s calendars in the month of December look as though someone dumped a year’s worth of events into one month. Good preparation might require some tough decisions on what makes it into your calendar. Remember, the days are only so long. And your time and energy aren’t endless, either.

This message is an excerpt of the devotional “What wants to be born in you: Advent is a time of darkness and possibility” by Sonia C. Solomonson in the December 2016 issue of Gather magazine. Today we remember John of the Cross, renewer of the church, who died in 1591.

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